Hybridity in Cultural Globalization

Hybridity has become a master trope across many spheres of cultural research, theory, and criticism, and one of the most widely used and criticized concepts in postcolonial theory. This article begins with a thorough review of the interdisciplinary scholarship on hybridity. Then it revisits the trope of hybridity in the context of a series of articles on cultural globalization published in the Washington Post in 1998. This series on “American Popular Culture Abroad” appropriates hybridity to describe the global reception of U.S. American popular culture. Due to the controversy surrounding hybridity, the discourse woven into these articles invites a critical deconstruction. A discussion of the implications of hybridity\u27s conceptual ambiguity follows. Finally, this article makes the case that hybridity is a conceptual inevitability, and proposes an intercontextual theory of hybridity, which comprehends global cultural dynamics by articulating hybridity and hegemony, providing an initial theoretical platform for a critical cultural transnationalism

Public Media in the Arab World: Exploring the Gap Between Reality and Ideals

The Center for Social Media collaborated with the Arab Media and Public Life (AMPLE) project at American University for a year-long conference series on public media in the Arab world and focused on changes in the media environment, the role of the state, and what “public media” means in the Arab world. Themes that emerged in the series included the tension between political and business interests, and the public interest. Additionally, the series explored the effects of interaction of local audiences with transnational media, the role of traditional versus non-traditional media, changes in the media despite political stagnation, globalization and popular culture, and the difference between “public” and “audience.” In this context, can we speak of a “public” or is it more rigorous to refer to plural “publics” when discussing transnational satellite television? If there are several publics, then how is the “public interest” defined? The project proceeded over three convenings, which featured presentations by leaders in the field and the development of an agenda for research and practice to expand the scope of public media geographically, conceptually and topicall

Reality Television and Politics in the Arab World: Preliminary Observations

The most popular and controversial television programs in the Arab world are “reality” shows like Super Star and Star Academy, broadcast by satellite to viewers from Morocco to Iraq. These shows claim to be live, non-scripted and therefore real . Many rely on audience participation in the form of voting for favorite contestants. In the wake of controversy triggered by Super Star and Star Academy, some observers have hailed reality television as a harbinger of democracy in the Arab world. This article explores the complex ways in which Arab reality television can be described as political and poses questions about the role of reality programs in the Pan-Arab public sphere. Based on fieldwork, textual analysis, and interviews with television producers and market researchers, this article concludes with preliminary observations on the political implications of Arab reality television

Convergence and Disjuncture in Global Digital Culture: An Introduction

In the 1980s and 1990s, the question “Is there a global culture?” fueled heated debates as intellectual opponents debated the social, political, economic, and cultural consequences of globalization. Guest-edited by Marwan M. Kraidy, this Special Section of the International Journal of Communication by global communication scholars revisits the discussion on global culture in light of the digital revolution. Originally presented at CARGC’s second Biennial Symposium in April 2016, these articles do not pretend to provide a comprehensive answer to the existence or lack thereof of a global digital culture. Rather, they consider this question as an intellectual provocation to revisit how the universal relates to the particular, the global to the local, the digital to the material. Questions guiding these articles include: How do networks transmute individual autonomy and the sovereignty of the body? How is digital culture fomenting disjuncture across the globe in dissident, marginal, or rogue formations? How is the digital affecting the ways people work and play, how they experience and judge beauty, and how they protest? Most fundamentally, does digitization herald a new chapter in how we understand ourselves? To read this special issue of International Journal of Communication in full, visit http://ijoc.org

Popular Culture as a Political Barometer: Lebanese-Syrian Relations and \u3cem\u3eSuperstar\u3c/em\u3e

On the evening of Monday, August 11, 2003, two spontaneous riots erupted in Beirut. They occurred around the same time and were triggered by the same event. About an hour earlier, Future TV had announced voting results after the semi-final of its flagship program, Superstar, the Arabic version of Pop Idol (UK) or American Idol (US). The first riot erupted at the Beirut Hall, a concert venue where the Superstar finale had just concluded. Several people passed out, including one the mothers of two semi-finalists and the third semi-finalist herself who lost consciousness after learning she had moved on to the finale. The second riot unfolded when fans of the ousted semi-finalist gathered spontaneously in front of Future Television studios to protest the decision. What gave these riots their passion and poignancy was the fact that the Lebanese contestant Melhem Zein was eliminated while the Syrian candidate Rowayda Attiyeh was elevated to the finale

Youth, Media and Culture in the Arab World

\u27Traditionally, Arab society dealt with youth in a superficial and slightly condescending manner’, an Arab columnist wrote recently, ‘offering the occasional sports club and scout troop, a usually underfunded and dysfunctional govemment ministry or organization for youth issues, and a correspondingly noncredible occasional speech by a highranking official stressing that youths are the promise of the future\u27(Khouri, 2005). In light of this somber diagnosis with which many analysts of the Arab world would concur, it appears paradoxical that, today, Arab youth is at the center of some of the most important and controversial debates, from the impact of Western modernity on gender roles and social relations to consumerism and radical political violence. The scope of these debates transcends the borders of the 22 states making up the Arab world in a post September 11, 2001, environment where Arab youth has become a site that is contested both internally and externally. Young Arab women and men are simultaneously subjected to competing and oftentimes conflicting messages from their parents, educational and religious institutions, the vibrant Arab satellite television industry, \u27public diplomacy\u27 from the USA, Iran and others, and the interlocking economic, technological and cultural forces of globalization